


Monster of the Week

by Zai42



Series: Children of the Night [5]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Kidnapping, M/M, Monsters, Vampires, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:22:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22919161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zai42/pseuds/Zai42
Summary: The circus, Elias says, is a rival vampire coven. He is technically correct.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Jonathan Sims, Georgie Barker/Jonathan Sims
Series: Children of the Night [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1169435
Comments: 14
Kudos: 90





	Monster of the Week

Georgie hadn't been home, when the doll appeared for the first time. Nikola, she’d called herself. From the circus. In the thin light of the waxing moon, filtered through the curtains, her joins had gleamed silver.

“What is the circus?” Jon demanded. It was three days later, and he stood bristling in Elias’ office, palms flat against the gleaming oak of his desk. The archives had been useless, and Jon wasn’t quite desperate enough to try asking Tim about it. Not yet.

Elias eyed him over the rim of the reading glasses he didn’t need. “A rival vampire coven,” he said blandly. “I’ve told you this before.”

“The thing that broke into my home was _not_ a vampire,” Jon said. “What are you hiding?”

Elias let out a faint huff of a laugh. “I try to be nothing if not transparent.” He stood, circling the desk to stand unnervingly close to Jon. “Describe it.” He leaned in, crowding Jon against the desk to inhale his scent. “You certainly don’t smell like another vampire. Did it not attack you?”

Jon pulled away. “I - I told you, it wasn't a vampire. It wasn’t _alive.”_ Elias arched an eyebrow. “Or undead,” Jon continued testily. “It was - it was some sort of automaton. A doll. I couldn’t see it very well, it had blown out the lights.”

“Your lycanthrope associate wasn’t available to chase it off?” Elias asked mildly.

“That isn’t the point.”

“What _is_ your point?”

“That there is _something_ out there that is apparently intent on hunting me!” Jon said. “Something that isn’t anything I know how to deal with. Something like Jane Prentiss.”

Elias gave him a tight smile. “The circus,” he started, then paused and reconsidered. “Whatever the circus is doing, I can promise you they are not at all like Jane Prentiss. Very little is.”

“But you know what they are,” Jon pressed.

Elias steepled his fingers, regarding Jon with flat black eyes. “I’m afraid that information comes at a price.”

Jon narrowed his eyes. “What price?”

Elias grinned. His fangs flashed. “I’ve told you before,” Elias said, “that I do so value your humanity. But there are certain things that are...if you’ll forgive me...best kept in the blood?”

Jon recoiled. “I should have asked Tim,” he said.

“Tim wouldn’t be able to tell you,” Elias said. “This isn’t something I’m keeping from you for my own amusement.” He stepped forward. “There is deeper magic at play here than you are aware, Jon.” He extended a hand. “I can give you the truth, but not as you are now.”

Jon hesitated, staring at the hand Elias held out towards him. Slowly, reluctantly, he backed away. “No,” he said. “I - ” He cleared his throat, straightened, took on the appearance of a man confident in the choice he was making. “I’ll do more research,” he said coolly. “Thank you for your...help.”

“Of course,” Elias said, stepping smoothly back, watching Jon’s back as he left his office. “Oh, one question,” he said, just as Jon closed his hand around the doorknob. “Did you happen to see what this automaton of yours was made of?”

Jon paused. He thought of the glimmer of silver in the pale light of the moon. “I - no,” he said, faintly. “It was - it was dark, it could have been anything.”

“Of course,” Elias said, his tone conciliatory, soothing, full of false comfort. “Good luck with your research.”

* * *

They came again, the circus. The morning after the full moon, while Georgie dozed on the couch with the Admiral. Jon had stepped out to bring home breakfast and instead found himself facing down two enormous - somethings. Vampires or not, it was difficult to tell, but whatever they were, they were certainly not human. Whatever glamour they’d used before to make their deliveries to the archive, it had fallen away.

“Can I help you?” Jon asked tightly, hovering between bolting and screaming. It was early still, but Georgie would certainly hear him, and perhaps even Breekon and Hope weren’t so bold as to snatch him off a street in full daylight -

“No need to look so skittish,” said Breekon, or Hope. A hand that did not feel like a hand clapped down onto Jon’s shoulder. He couldn’t make himself look away from Hope’s, or Breekon’s, eyes. They were flat and dark and reminded him of the buttons on his grandmother’s coat that he used to be so fascinated by, a half-recalled memory, foggy and distant. “Just want a chat.”

_Oh, I’m being enthralled,_ Jon thought vaguely, and followed them into their van as his mind went white.

* * *

_His time with Nikola is difficult to look at, spongy and soft and sliding away from him like eddies of oil on the surface of a puddle. She is not a vampire and she is not a werewolf and Jon has no words for what she is besides “monster.” She touches him and guides his hand to touch her component parts - holly boughs, consecrated silver, sinew. She wants a skin to wrap it in, like the witches of old. She thinks he might make her real._

_Then Michael comes, and Helen follows him, and Jon is rescued but what they_ are _slips away and away and away, they smell almost like Georgie, more like Daisy, sometimes like Melanie or Tim but it is so hard to focus on them, on the reality of them, and when Jon wakes he’s draped over Georgie’s couch and she is not human and he has been gone a month._

* * *

“This conversation would be easier if I could speak freely,” Elias said.

  
Jon fumed, but the suggestion didn’t send the same sparks of fury through him as it had before - there was anger, yes, Elias could smell it in his blood, but it was subdued, shot through with fear, simmering and sweet.

Jon was a delicate project, but Elias was a skilled touch; let him think he had conjured the thoughts himself, of the circus and their monster-killing machine, of Nikola driving the stakes of her fingers through Martin’s heart, the silver of her teeth closing around Georgie’s throat. It wasn’t difficult to nudge his thoughts towards the macabre, the gruesome, the destruction of his tenuous little _pack._

Jon’s hand went shakily to his throat, slipping open the first two buttons of his shirt. “Fine,” he whispered, and tilted his head back to bare his neck.

**Author's Note:**

> Jon has to get his neck bit by everyone or this AU will be a failure.


End file.
